Malalai Joya visits a girls' school in Farah province in Afghanistan. Photo: AfghanKabul.

By Malalai Joya

October 10, 2010 -- rabble.ca -- In the United States, many looked to the ballot box and hoped for real change when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.

To
be honest, I never expected that he would be any different for
Afghanistan than President George W. Bush. The truth is that Obama's war
policies have turned out to be even more of a nightmare than most
people expected. Obama talked a lot about hope and change, but for
Afghanistan the only change has been for the worse.

After almost
two years of Obama, the number of US troops occupying Afghanistan has
more than doubled. And the number of drone attacks in Pakistan has
increased. Obama's so-called surge of troops has resulted in increased
Afghan civilian deaths.

The documents released by Wikileaks
prove what we have been saying about war in Afghanistan. There are more
massacres by NATO forces than they wanted us to believe. Now the whole
world should know this war is a disaster.

All this is why, for
our people, Obama is a warmonger, like another Bush. These are the
reasons that throughout Afghanistan more and more people are taking to
the streets to protest the US occupation.

And Obama's surge of
the war has also put more US soldiers at risk. And more Canadian
troops have died. Why are Obama and [Canada's Prime Minister Stephen] Harper wasting so much money on this
war when they cannot give jobs or even houses to their own poor people?
There are many homeless in Vancouver, but instead Harper spends
billions of dollars and new weapons of war...

It has been five
years since I was elected to the Afghan parliament. I faced many
obstacles just to get elected. They cut off my microphone. They
threatened me with death and illegally removed [me] from my seat.

We
had a new election in September, but I chose not to participate.
Amid the chaos of occupation and this puppet regime, rule of
drug mafia and warlords, any hope I once had for using the ballot box to
achieve change in Afghanistan is now gone.

It was a difficult
decision not to fight for my rightful place in parliament. I had
invitations to run from many provinces in Afghanistan, and it was
difficult to say no to these friends and supporters.

My personal experience, as well as the advice from those close to me, convinced me that I should sit this campaign out.

As
the whole world saw, the 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan was a
total fraud. The whole world knows there was ballot stuffing, vote
buying and massive corruption. And there was no real choice anyway. The
two candidates were enemies of our people. The only [chance] with this
vote for Afghanistan was a new saddle for the same donkey. It turned out
we were stuck with the same donkey, wearing the same saddle. Hamid Karzai and
his corrupt brother in Kandahar province, Wali Karzai, who Afghans call
"small Bush".

Again, the September 18 that the parliamentary
election was a bad joke. According to the news, in one district in
Paktika province, the voter turnout was 626 per cent! There was a great
deal of buying and selling of votes.

Over the past five years,
the US and allies made warlords more powerful so they can now even
more easily highjack the election results. It was a selection, not an
election. Most members of parliament are law breakers not law makers.

This
time, many refused to vote. Afghans don't want so-called democracy and
so-called elections where guns and money have the first and last word. [Canada's] foreign minister, Peter MacKay, and Prime Minister Harper call
this "democracy" and "progress". But Afghans call this a bad joke.

I
never really wanted to be a politician anyway. I was a social activist
who used politics to continue my social activism on behalf of the poor
of Afghanistan. When no justice can be achieved through the ballot box,
the people must find alternative ways to fight for their rights. We will
never rest for a moment...

Today Stephen Harper and the Canadian government are trying to deceive the Canadian people about the war in Afghanistan.

Harper
is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. On one side, he is saying
Canadian troops will leave Afghanistan in 2011. But on the other side
Harper is saying to US and NATO, don't worry, Canada will stay with
troops and help in different ways to occupy Afghanistan.

And Harper is saying that Canada will stay to do "training" of troops of puppet Karzai regime.

We Afghan people don't need any more "training" from the Canadian government after 2011.

We Afghans don't want any more bombing after 2011.

We Afghans don't want any more torture by NATO and Afghan puppet forces.

We Afghans don't want any more occupation by NATO. Instead of staying
after 2011, it is better that Canadian troops leave sooner, leave now.

[This article first appeared at rabble.ca. Malalai
Joya, now 32, was the youngest woman elected to the Afghan parliament
in 2005. This is an excerpt from a speech delivered October 12 at
W2 Storyeum, part of an anti-war benefit evening organised by the
StopWar.ca Coalition. Joya's book, A Woman Among Warlords (Scribner,
2009), was co-written with Vancouver-based activist and rabble.ca
contributor Derrick O'Keefe.]